Crucify him! Crucify him!

During the reading of the Passion Gospel in some churches, the congregation is asked to participate more actively than the listening, and, finally, kneeling, that we normally do: they are asked to be a part of the contentious crowd, and, at the appropriate time in the narrative, cry out "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

Try it silently in your mind.

How does it feel?

In my experience, the cries we made were rather anemic – they certainly wouldn’t have convinced Pilate of our sincerity!

Most people found shouting "Crucify him! Crucify him!" to be a disconcerting experience, awkward at best, and uncomfortable.

Some weren’t able to say the words at all, and those who did couldn’t seem to muster much volume or conviction.

Crucify him! Crucify him!

I was reminded of our uncomfortable response the other day when my 6 year old granddaughter and I were talking about Jesus, about the Easter story, and had moved from the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper, and now to Good Friday and the Crucifixion.

"Granny! Don’t talk about it!" she reprimanded me.

As I started to ask her "Why?" she put her hand in front of my mouth and said sternly:

"I said ‘Don’t talk about it’!"

"Why don’t you want to talk about it?" I asked through her fingers.

"Because it makes me sad, and it makes me mad!" she replied, her lower lip trembling.

It makes me sad, and it makes me mad.

Today, if we allow ourselves to "go there," to experience the pain, the tragedy, the scandal, of the cross, we’re sad, and we’re mad.

Like Taylor, we don’t want to think about it.

Not only does the whole idea of death make us uncomfortable, but this death, inflicted on this person, seems especially incomprehensible.

Jesus did not die neatly tucked away out of sight in a hospital room.

He did not die of "natural causes;" nor, indeed, were there heroic efforts made on his behalf to save him.

His death was not reported from a distance, with journalistic objectivity as just one more of the many news clips of the day.

His was the shameful and scandalous death of a public and painful execution as a common criminal.

And so we’re left with the questions which often still haunt us when a loved one dies:

As the German theologian Hans Iwand remarked, "Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end…"

Certainly to the frightened and grieving disciples, this Friday feels like an end. You can feel their faith evaporating as the reality of the crucifixion becomes clear to them – yes, it really is going to happen, no God is not rescuing him, no he’s not coming down from that cross, yes he is dead.

We’ve believed in a God – and in the Messiah of God.

We’ve cast our lot with him, leaving everything to follow him.

We’ve experienced the joy of his presence, the hope of his message; we’ve allowed ourselves to imagine a Kingdom of God in which there is justice, mercy, righteousness; in which the poor have a legitimate place…

Jesus was the Messiah on whom rested all our hopes and dreams for the future, and now… like all the rest, he’s gone, and we’re left with a handful of dust. Nothing.

Perhaps Jesus wasn’t the Messiah after all…

Jesus was not the first – and would not be the last! – to die such a gruesome death.

Certainly his execution – his crucifixion – is a normal place for faith to end.

And, if we end the story here, instead of on Easter, undoubtedly this is the place where faith does end…

But we get ahead of ourselves.

Today we are left with the questions, the death, and the despair…

Often we try to "detach" the reality of that death from everything else about Jesus: we celebrate his preaching, his teaching, his resurrection – as though that could have occurred without his death – in word and sacrament, without allowing the events of Good Friday – "Don’t talk about it!" – to penetrate our consciousness.

And yet, in avoiding the topic of Jesus’ death, in setting it aside or skipping over it, we as Christians, we as people, miss the important lesson of our own responsibility in what happened. Richard John Neuhaus reminds us that "Golgotha, the place of the skull, where nails smashed through the wrists and feet of Jesus, the teacher from Nazareth in Galilee, can stand for the skulls of every genocide. Betrayal by friends, self-preserving denial, making sport with prisoners, the mockery of crowds, spectators drawn to the spectacle, the soldiers doing their duty and dicing for his clothes, a mother in agony, and a knot of women helplessly looking on – it happens time, and time, and time again."

It happens time and time again.

Sound familiar?

We find it throughout history…

It, too, makes us sad, and it makes us mad.

And it leaves us with questions:

Thomas Hardy has a poem addressing the particularities of "Unkept Good Fridays" which begins:

There are many more Good Fridays

Than this, if we but knew

The names, and could relate them,

Of men whom rulers slew

For their goodwill, and date them

As runs the twelvemonth through.

THIS Good Friday, the one we remember, challenges us to be both sad and mad.

It challenges us to look, not as God’s responsibility to prevent it, but at our own responsibility: to rephrase the questions, so that we ask:

This day, and this death, challenges us to look at our own issues of faith, courage, compassion, faithfulness.

This day, and this death, challenges us to look at how well we love our neighbor and how conscious are we of our own participation in the sins of the world.

Are we part of crowds shouting – in the vernacular of 20^th century American consumer-speak – "Crucify him! Crucify him!"?

Are we part of the crowds hiding in denial?

Are we the mother in agony, the women helplessly looking on?

What can we do to STOP these Good Fridays from occurring?

What can we do to STOP crucifying the Christ in our neighbors?

If we avoid the subject – a cruel death at the hand of another – we also escape its lessons.

If we avoid the subject we also escape its lessons.

Today is not the only day we celebrate Good Friday, of course.

It is not the only day we remember.

Every Sunday we celebrate this death: "the body of Christ" we hear, as we reach out our hands to receive the host; then, consuming it, making a tomb – or is it a womb? – of our corporal bodies, we take that body within us and seek to let Christ’s resurrected life inform our own lives.

Today, as we bring ourselves once again to the foot of the cross, may we be both sad and mad, and may Jesus’ death bless us with the fullness of its meaning for us, that we might grow in love and courage to more faithfully live as Christ has called us to live. Amen.